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Constituency Statement: MENA Twilight Cup

A couple of weeks ago the Melbourne East Netball Association held the annual Deakin Twilight Cup, an event that I have been thrilled to jointly host over the past four years. The tournament sees more than 500 junior netballers from 14 clubs across the region participate in a round-robin tournament throughout the day.

The tournament is designed to be a really fun day for players in the under-11, under-13, and under-15 age groups. Each team plays up to eight matches of 15 minutes in duration throughout the day. The top four teams in each category then go on to compete in a final series under lights—hence, why it is called the Deakin Twilight Cup.

Congratulations to the winning teams in each of the respective sections. In the under-11 age category the section 1 grand final was won by Park Orchards, while the section 2 winners were the Southwood Legends. In the under-13s the section 1 grand final went to Southwood Diamonds, while the section 2 winners were the Ringwood North Crunchy Nuts. Finally, in the under-15 category the section 1 grand final was one by the Ringwood North Coco Pops—obviously they had thought of their names over breakfast that day!—and the section 2 match was won by Southwood Lightning.

Held at the HE Parker Reserve, I really enjoyed watching a couple of the games and then having an opportunity to meet the players by presenting trophies and medals to the grand finalists and runners up. I want to particularly acknowledge all of the players and, of course, the volunteers, parents and those on the MENA committee, led by Councillor Kylie Spears, who really do a power of work each year to get this tournament going—but they do a power of work every Saturday to make sure the tournaments and competitions run very smoothly.

This year the Deakin Twilight Tournament took place on a pretty hot day—33 degrees—a couple of degrees away from players not being able to participate. So I am really pleased that future competitions and future participants in the Deakin Twilight Cup will be hosted in a purpose-built stadium that will enable all players at HE Parker Reserve to play inside rain, hail or shine.

As I said on the day, planning is rapidly progressing towards delivering on that stadium, which was a commitment of the government last year. We have provided $10½ million of funding towards a new state-of-the-art netball centre. I am very much looking forward to seeing that stadium built and seeing it able to offer opportunities for lots of young netballers into the future.

Click here to access a PDF copy of the Hansard transcript of this speech.